Mortgage Rate Increases Kill New Home Sales
New Home Sales
Just out – The Commerce Department reported U.S. sales of newly built home dropped 13.4 percent. That’s the lowest pace in nine months!
Up to this point, the new home sales rose 7 percent in the 12 months ending in July. Read more 
New Housing Starts Drop to Ten-Month Low
Housing recovery
Real Estate – Could This Be The End of The Recovery?
Have you ever noticed in the last couple of years on the majority of economic reports they usually start with a phrase like unexpected, surprisingly, or stunning? Nothing wrong with these adjectives, except for the fact that they always seem to be used on reports that are negative to the economy and naturally ones that the economist predicted would be the exact opposite.
Well, today’s report on new housing starts is no exception. In both the Reuters and the MSN versions, the story starts off using the term unexpectedly fell. Yes, today’s report by the US Commerce Department on new housing starts, show that they dropped to a 10 month low of a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 836,000 units. What effect, if any, will this have on our current housing recovery?
Real Estate History
Banks are once again being pressured by the government to make loans to low income families.
Government Can’t make this stuff up. After going into a massive recession, caused in part from sectors of the banking industry being heavily influenced to give out sub-prime loans to those who couldn’t afford them, whether through CRA or red-lining laws, Obama is now urging banks to start lending out to low-income families to buy houses. This government influence into banking risk analysis procedures largely got us into the mess we are in. Those who don’t learn from history, are doomed to repeat it?
San Diego MLS home listings
March Home Prices Best In 7 Years
Home Prices Increase
The real estate tracking company CoreLogic, just reported this morning that their home price index jumped 1.9% from February to March. But, the big news was that the index for March 2013 was 10.5% higher than the year ago period! This was the biggest increase for the home price index since March 2006. Read more
U.S. Homeownership Rate Falls
U.S. Homeownership
Well, for most people. Today’s real estate news was about the good home price appreciation, announced in the release of the Case Shiller 20 city index. on a number of TV and radio news reports that I heard during the day, not one that mentioned the increase in the case Shiller index said anything about the announced news today from the Census Bureau that announced the US homeownership rate dropped to its lowest level since 1997! Read more
Home Sales for March Improve
March pending home sales improve
The National Association of Realtors just announced that pending home sales increased in March 2013 to the highest rate since April 2010! Home purchase contracts signings rose in the South, West and Midwest, and were unchanged in the Northeast.
Home purchase signed contracts were 7 percent higher than the March , 2012 figures. Read more
U.S. New Home Construction Hit 5 Year High
New Home Construction Jumps
Today the U.S. Department of Commerce released a report showing new home construction in March hit its highest rate in almost 5 years! New home starts in March were up 47% from the same period last year, the largest year-over-year growth since 1992! Read more
Home Prices Up 10.2%
Home Prices Up
CoreLogic, a real estate data provider just reported that home prices in February increased by 10.2% over the year ago period. The February home price increases mark 12 months of annual price improvement.
The gains in home prices were very broadly based with 47 of 50 states showing home price improvement. Read more
US Home Sales Increase
US Home Sales
The National Association of Realtors said today that sales rose a tiny .4% in January compared with December 2012, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.92 million. That was the second-highest sales pace since November 2009.
In December, sales declined to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.9 million from 4.96 million in November, according to revised figures released today. The December drop was linked, in part, to the tight supply of homes. Read more
Home Short Sales and Fannie Mae
Home Short Sales
In mid-2012, in an effort to reduce taxpayer loss and deter fraud, Fannie Mae implemented a new valuation practice and began countering short sale offers at prices Fannie Mae believed to be closer to market value.
Many REALTORS® have reported that since this practice went into effect, the counter offers issued by Fannie Mae are above market value and are preventing short sales from closing. Read more